Anpo-san,
can you talk about your day-to-day responsibilities on the title?

Yasuhiro
Anpo: As the director on the game, with such
a big team -- there are almost a hundred people working on this game, at the
moment.

The most important thing in my job, and the thing that takes up the
most of my time from day to day, is to look at the work that different parts of
my team are bringing to me.

To look it over -- to make sure it fits both the
standard that we expect from the game, and the direction that we want to bring
this game in -- and either reject it or approve it. So that's the thing that I
do most, day to day.

Capcom
is, I guess, out of the Japanese publishers -- maybe Nintendo also, but in a
very different way -- has found the most success in the west, this generation.
And it's probably one of the only Japanese publishers that has made several
games that, I think, feel on the same level as the western games -- and have a
similar feel, while retaining their identity. Can you talk about why you think
Capcom has made that leap that some of the other publishers are still
struggling with?

YA: Probably the most important reason is
that we decided very early on that we wanted to have a multi-platform strategy
for this generation, and we set out to build -- and did build -- the MT
Framework, which is our multi-platform engine that we use internally at Capcom.

Because we had that ready to go, and we had
that created, that's probably what gave us the advantage over other Japanese
developers who are maybe struggling with the next-gen consoles, to a certain
extent, and maybe only now are getting to grips with it.

Is
there something creative at Capcom, too, that's part of the equation? Ultimately,
Resident Evil, all the way back to
PS1, is the game coming out of Japan that best captures that Hollywood movie
feel -- and I feel that if you look at Lost
Planet, Dead Rising, Resident Evil,
and other major Capcom games in this generation, they really bring up the
polish and manage to retain that. It's become a Capcom style, in a certain
sense. What drives that, at Capcom?

JT: Well, I think that there are two
reasons, mainly, why that is. First of all, we at Capcom, when we set out to
make a game, we make it on a world-wide basis.

We make a game that people all
over the world are going to buy. And I think that that way of thinking is one
of the reasons for our successes.

Maybe at other developers, they first of
all look at the Japanese market, and then say, "Oh, we can also sell this
in the west."

They develop it first for the internal market, for the
Japanese market; but we at Capcom, we look at it first of all as selling
something for the whole world.

The second reason, I think, is that we in
Capcom are based in Osaka,
unlike most of the other Japanese developers, who are based largely in Tokyo.

And I think that gives us -- we have a lot of creative people, and the
atmosphere and feeling in the workplace is a little bit different, and I think
that gives us a little bit of originality, and allows us also to make something
that's technically very high level.

To
say that, you must be from Kansai! [Ed.
note: Kansai is the region in Japan
which contains Osaka,
Kobe,
and Kyoto,
among other cities. The region containing Tokyo
is known as Kanto.]

So
you guys think you're better than people from Kanto at making games?

JT: People in Kansai think that!

YA: One of the differences is that the
people in Kanto, and the people in Tokyo, would think that they would join a
company, thinking that it would be a step up to getting into another, bigger
company. Or thinking, "Well, even if I get into this company and it's no
good, I can always go to some other company."

But people who join Capcom only
want to work for Capcom; that's the only thing that they're interested in. Maybe
that's another big difference, too.